


Signed, Sealed, Delivered

by TheWrongKindOfPC



Category: The Secret Garden - All Media Types, The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
Genre: Established Relationship, Love Letters, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-23
Updated: 2013-05-23
Packaged: 2017-12-12 18:21:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/814589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWrongKindOfPC/pseuds/TheWrongKindOfPC
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mary goes away, but she sends letters to her boys back home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Signed, Sealed, Delivered

**Author's Note:**

  * For [surexit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/surexit/gifts).



> The first section was originally written for a meme surexit was doing--this is it cleaned up, expanded upon, with a response snippet added on the end.

_Dear Colin and Dickon_ she starts. Then she scribbles it out furiously. At least the last three attempts had managed to make it past the salutation. Even if they had then been consigned to the flames. It just sounds so—so formal, though. It feels wrong, to be writing to Colin and Dickon with the same heading as the form letters in her etiquette book.

Mary has wasted enough paper, though. Colin and Dickon know she can be a bit scattered. They won't hold it against her, she doesn't think. And if they do, she has plenty on them, they ought to know well enough to keep their mouths shut. On the line just below the scribbled out salutation, she tries, _my dear boys_ but scrawls a disgusted “X” over it before she can move any further along that vein. Far too cloying, who does she think she's trying to fool?

She laughs a little at herself. Nothing to do with Colin and Dickon should be causing her this much anxiety. If they were here, and she was making this much fuss about a letter, Dickon would stand behind her and massage her temples. Colin would sit up on the desk and face her, swinging his feet and kicking the rungs of her chair. He'd probably steal her pen. Well--he'd _probably_ lean forward over Mary's head to kiss Dickon. He'd probably try to balance by resting one hand in her hair, and she'd have no choice but to reach forward and tickle his ribs until he’d almost fall off the desk. He'd probably kiss her, then, press her back into Dickon's arms, and she closes her eyes against a sudden wave of longing. Oh, but she misses them already.

After a moment, she looks back down at the paper, and skips down a third line to try one more time. _Being a missive for the boy-Rajah and the mighty Merlin, aged back to youth_. It's an old joke, one dating back to Colin's Arthurian phase and her and Colin’s incredibly inept wooing of Dickon, and an even older one, reaching back to that first night when she’d come across a skinny, pale boy with paradoxically commanding manners crying in his bed. It's perfect. It's fine. Finally, she lets herself go on. _London is like nothing else, you wouldn't believe it, I swear..._

…

_Being a missive for the boy-Rajah and the mighty Merlin, aged back to youth,_ Colin reads to himself, grinning, then reads aloud for Dickon to hear from where he’s lying on the hearth rug of the groundskeeper’s cabin at the final edge of the gardens. It’s only been Dickon’s place a little while, since the last groundskeeper had passed on last winter, but already it feels as much like home to Colin as the garden does. Dickon smiles appreciatively up at him, kicks his legs up to rest in Colin’s lap and says, “Go on, then.”

Colin wraps his free hand, the one not holding Mary’s letter, around the arch of Dickon’s stockinged foot and goes on, as requested. There’s something about sharing Mary’s letter between them that feels comfortable, like she’s there with them. _You wouldn’t believe it, I swear,_ Colin reads, _Stone everywhere, and it's so cold, it is, but there’s also something wild to it, like a garden left untended. When I’m enjoying it, I think the people in it are like birds, flitting in and out. When I’m cross, they’re the rats and toads lurking in the weeds._

‘So perfectly Mary,’ he thinks as he reads, thinking of everything in terms of plants and growing things. Something she got from Dickon, certainly, but also nothing Dickon would ever say. Colin cuts himself off for a moment, reaching his hand up to wrap around Dickon’s bare ankle and tell him, “You’re reading the next one to me, though.”

Colin won’t have Mary’s letters become more his than Dickon’s just because she addresses them to him in the post. It’s not how she means them and it wouldn’t be right. Dickon nods, smiling like he knows what Colin isn’t saying, and Colin looks back down at the page and resumes reading.


End file.
